Why have we lost the spirit of questioning handed down by the Vedas, the Upanishads, the epics?

How can we, superstition-ridden, and unable or refusing to think for ourselves, be the descendants of the writers of these works, asks novelist Shashi Deshpande

Shashi Deshpande

· Jul 25, 2021 · 08:30 am

Things are stacked against women’s writing. Can a new prize for women writers really change things?

Novelist Shashi Deshpande fears the Carol Shields Prize for Fiction will not add dignity and prestige to women’s writing overnight.

Shashi Deshpande

· Feb 21, 2021 · 08:30 am

‘Lady Susan’: Novelist Shashi Deshpande on Jane Austen’s novel of the femme fatale (and her oeuvre)

Jane Austen was born on December 16, 1775, and died on July 18, 1817.

Shashi Deshpande

· Dec 16, 2020 · 05:30 pm

Hathras gangrape is a reminder that no party really cares about women or Dalits

Each case of rape seems to bring out a different kind of cruelty that lies latent within us.

Shashi Deshpande

· Oct 31, 2020 · 07:30 am

‘Write about what is happening to the world? I can’t’: Shashi Deshpande on the coronavirus

‘Sometimes I wonder what it will be like, a world without the old.’

Shashi Deshpande

· Jun 28, 2020 · 11:30 am

On International Women’s Day, a reminder of what women really want

As women across India come out to protest the Citizenship Amendment Act, have we reached a turning point?

Shashi Deshpande

· Mar 08, 2020 · 06:30 am

Citizenship Amendment Act protests across the country are reviving old heroes and forgotten ideals

The student-led movement has given us some painful images, but also some powerful ones.

Shashi Deshpande

· Jan 12, 2020 · 12:30 pm

Shashi Deshpande: ‘Rape is an offshoot of the idea of power. Most women still remain powerless’

All the poems, the novels, the stories authors write, all the terrible stories that journalists give the world, cannot stop a single man from raping.

Shashi Deshpande

· Dec 11, 2019 · 06:30 am

Shashi Deshpande: ‘Will India become a Hindu nation and non-Hindus become second-class citizens?’

The noted author on the growing chasms that Indians must confront.

Shashi Deshpande

· Dec 11, 2018 · 08:00 am

Novelist Shashi Deshpande on the difficulties of being a woman who writes (or, a ‘woman writer’)

‘There never has been a shortage of males criticising women’s writing.’

Shashi Deshpande

· Nov 16, 2018 · 08:30 am